Monday, April 23, 2012

Busy Weekend

We have survived another of the most congested weekends of the year here in the Skagit Valley. The weather was nearly perfect, the tulip fields are in bloom, and the annual street fair is now history. Whew!

While the rest of the world was trolling tulip fields or artist booths I was busy sewing my string blocks together. Ta daa!


It's only 48 x 56" but because the strings are sewn onto a foundation piece of fabric it ended up being too heavy to hang on my design wall for a photograph. That also posed finishing problems for me.


I was afraid that including the cotton batting I can safely work with would make this quilt uncomfortably heavy for a child. At the same time, I wanted to provide some "cush" to absorb the bulky seam allowances and make the quilt more cuddly. I called a friend and we discussed various options. Finally we decided that I would deliver the top to our local quilt group and someone there would finish the quilt by adding a polar fleece back, tying the layers together. Then it will be donated to Foster Care. In the future I will have to keep in mind the peculiarities of foundation pieced string blocks and plan accordingly.

The other major accomplishment of the weekend was getting the Dr. Seuss quilt pin basted.


I had just enough of the stacked books to bring a yard of a playful red print out to the necessary width. The punctuation print was in the sale corner the last time I visited my LQS so I had plenty of that to get the length I needed.


Now all I have to do is gird my loins and start quilting!

3 comments:

  1. What a beautiful scrappy quilt. It's the perfect antidote for an overflowing scrap bin. That punctuation fabric is really fun. Both quilts are full of wonderful details. Hopefully that will make the quilting interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Have you tried Mountain Mist quilt light polyester batting? I find I can tolerate it compared to the heat set poly battings which use chemicals.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your string quilt looks great! Yes, they can be quite heavy with those foundations! I always have mine done by the long-armer, and they are the heaviest quilts I have. Another option might be to use just flannel (pre-shrunk) as the batting. It adds a little "cush", but not too heavy or bulky. But those strings are still pretty tough to quilt! What a wrestling match that would be! Glad you found a workable plan!

    ReplyDelete

I'm sorry it's difficult or impossible for some of my readers to leave comments. I do appreciate your visits and the kind comments I receive.